Peacemaker
by Ukaisha
Summary: Kouichi hears angels. Really, there's nothing wrong with him. He knows that everyone else is out to get him, but his angel is there to keep him safe. His angel knows how he can make peace with himself, and she knows how to set him free. He is not crazy.
1. Chapter 1

Disclaimer: The author makes absolutely no stake or claim on any characters mentioned.  
Warning: Gore, violence, language.

A/N: A psychological experiment of mine. I'm afraid I have to tell you directly in the author notes: Kouichi has become schizophrenic, paranoid type. He never says it outright in the story and it's not actually mentioned, so I figured one could become confused.  
Please keep in mind that the third chapter will contain "gore." Also please keep in mind that all schizophrenics are not the same, and just because Kouichi went flat-out nuts doesn't mean all schizos are like that. No stereotyping. I just wanted there to be a story about a schizo that was more than him just hearing voices.

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Peacemaker

Kouichi had only just turned fourteen when he started getting the itching feeling that he was being watched all the time. At first it was a sort of nagging little suspicion, and it didn't really bother him or cause him concern. He would just suddenly stop and look over his shoulder while on the streets, or he'd turn around completely and spend a few moments analyzing the crowd. Nothing much, he just got that feeling.  
When he looked back and reflected on his behavior, he was slightly embarrassed, but he prided himself on being cautious. After all, he lived in a big city. There were weirdos running around all the time, and any time he could think to look out for himself was good. And since he never did find anyone behind him, he never accounted it to much. He was happier to find nothing suspicious behind him and feeling sheepish rather than being confronted by a lunatic stranger and getting killed.  
For over a month he lived with this irritating little suspicion, and while it sometimes seemed to grow, it gradually repressed. Kouichi soon forgot about it, and never bothered to wonder for more than a moment why he would unconsciously glance over his shoulder.  
It wasn't long afterwards, however, that he started not to just get a feeling, but an instinct, a fanatic _knowing _that someone was following him. Instead of casually looking over his shoulder, he would stop and pivot his body full, often freezing up for over five minutes before he would leave again. SOMEONE was following him. It became a terrifically paralyzing fear, and finally after a few weeks of this intensified version of his feeling, he became so overwhelmed with the suspicion that he was being followed by someone with malicious intentions that he froze dead in the middle of a road. For a full ten minutes he stood stone still, eyes wide and ears pounding with the car horns blaring at him from every which side. His heart thumped explosively until he thought he was going to have a heart attack, and he felt lightheaded, like he was going to faint. The vertigo was extreme and it seemed like he was on an extremely fast roller coaster, mentally and physically, and it flipped the world upside down. He turned and turned, unable to watch around him at all times, terrified that at any moment he was going to be viciously attacked, but from what direction?! He finally just collapsed in the street, and held his knees until he was led away by a police officer.

He tried to explain that he was sure he was being followed, but he couldn't understand the horrible, gripping fear that caught him and what was more, he couldn't explain WHY he thought he was being followed. He'd never ever actually caught someone behind him, and had never even noticed any familiarly suspicious faces, so really, there was no reason at all to be so fearful. Since he had never actually caught anyone following him, the officer simply told him to be careful, and could do nothing more.  
Kouichi suddenly started getting the feeling the officer was in on whoever was watching, and that they were conspiring together. The officer was grave as he explained that while it was good to be cautious, there was no reason to be overly paranoid, but Kouichi knew he saw a smug little grin on his face. The officer knew that he was spouting total bull, but he thought he had Kouichi fooled. He was wrong. Kouichi saw his hands twitch eagerly, like he was straining to hold himself back from squeezing his throat, and he caught that evil, vicious little spark in his eyes. He thought he was being all clever by playing the kind and concerned policeman, but he knew. He thought he didn't notice, but he knew. The officer offered to take him home, and he rejected very firmly, absolutely refusing to get within arm reach of him anymore. When he finally got into his car and drove away, Kouichi memorized the license number. He was now certain that he had not been an officer at all, but in fact a guy in a costume pretending to be one. He'd just narrowly escaped; thank God.

Kouichi hurried home to avoid anymore instances. It was only when he got inside and was confined to the safety of his home that he started to realize that no matter how he looked at it, he was being extensively paranoid. He had no excuse for feeling like this about random strangers. But, oh well; it had probably saved him from getting kidnapped by that fake police officer, so there was no point in getting frustrated over it. It wasn't a bad thing to be cautious.  
He was going to simply go to his room and do his homework, and not think about it at all when suddenly, without warning, the gripping fear came back, and this time, with an instinctual suspicion even more powerful than knowing there was someone stalking him. The guy who was following him knew were he lived. He was sure of it. He peeked out the blinds, just barely moving them down, and saw a man walking his dog just down the block. He was fairly old, considering his head was balding and what little hair that was left was whitening, and his companion was a harmless little black Labrador puppy. But the longer Kouichi watched him, the more he was sure that if this wasn't the man who was following him, he was in contact with him. He became so overwhelmed with fear that he closed all windows, locked all doors, went to his room, and then locked himself in it. He refused to come out, even when he heard a knock on the front door. While all logic told him it was his mother, Kouichi was afraid of the knocking and he knew the moment he answered it, he would be shot. Or stabbed. Or slashed. Or maybe none of them; maybe the guy would just launch himself at him and strangle him, or beat him, or rape him, or drug him. Kouichi was no expert at self-defense, and he was sure the man knew this, which is why he was being targeted. What would he do if he was attacked by a freak who raped boys before cutting their heads and arms and legs off, and ate them with soy sauce before digging out their brains and throwing them into windshields like pudding filled waterballoons?  
When his mother finally entered, she found him cowering in fear under his blanket, and his excuse for it was that he was feeling very ill. Unwilling to divulge his disturbance to his mother, he simply held to his sickness story until he went to bed early. Kouichi spent the night having vivid nightmares of being disemboweled and maimed, yet remaining alive, and screaming with pain and wishing so hard to die, but always remaining alive to feel more pain. He was so tense and torn up inside that when his alarm went off, he literally lurched out of sleep, moaning and spasming in time with the beeping. He wouldn't have been surprised to see froth at his lips.  
Kouichi felt so sick with fear that he begged his mother to let him stay home, and not being one to lie about his health, she took him quite seriously. All day long after she had left he patrolled the house, making sure everything was tightly locked, and occasionally looking out the window until he became so afraid of even that action that he refused to look through the blinds for any reason at all. Someone might be staring back at him on the other side, and he'd meet a glowering eyeball and a crooked smile. Or someone might be standing on the street with a gun, and the second he looked out the window, he'd shoot. He was afraid to even look through the tiny round eye hole in the door for fear that someone would stab him in the eye the second he did so. He had a vivid vision of clutching his eye and screaming in pain as the maniac laughed on the other side, and after that, he realized that there was something wrong.

Kouichi had never been known to suffer from inexplicable bouts of paranoia, or at least fear without reason. Thus far he'd been assuming he was acting on his instinct, which was usually spot-on, but when he realized his fears were becoming irrational, he figured there was a problem. Perhaps he'd developed some kind of phobia.; yes, that must be the case. Someone with a phobia could be logical enough to realize they were irrationally afraid of something, but when someone had something markedly worse than that, they refused to acknowledge something was wrong. If he had some kind of mental illness, he wouldn't have been so calm in realizing there was something off with him.  
He spent the day researching phobias on the internet, particularly ones that had to do with violence. Normally he had headphones on and he listened to music while he sat at his computer, but he was certain that the second the songs began to play, someone would break in, and he'd fail to hear them until they were right behind them. He did not think that this was apart of his irrational fears, he figured this was a logical caution. With his mother gone, she would not be alerted to the sound of someone breaking in, and with him alone, it seemed stupid to disable himself. He'd just found a phobia that looked promising, Thanatophobia, the fear of dying, when he got the horrible feeling someone was behind him. He spun around in his chair so fast and violently that his keyboard flew off his desk, and he gripped the arms of the chair hard, staring at empty space behind him. No one was there; no one at all. Just to make sure, he continued staring for a few minutes, then picked up his keyboard and spun the chair a few times, as if going back to work, but he continued to stare behind him. He finally returned to his computer. He was shaking. As he looked into the monitor, he could've sworn he saw a face reflecting in it, and he turned around again. No one was there; no one at all. Just to calm himself down, he checked the locks again and searched the house, making double sure that nothing had been disturbed. It made him less at ease, not more. He took a knife from the kitchen and kept it close to him.

Hours passed without incident, and Kouichi was perfectly calm now. Thanatophobia didn't seem to be a lead. It was basically the fear of dying from ANYTHING, which wasn't specific enough, and some people seemed to believe it had more to do with a religious point of view. Not the act of dying, but the fear of what happens after. Kouichi was very specific that he was the target of violence. Someone was going to kill him. Perhaps it was Scelerophobia, the fear burglars? But then that didn't make any sense. He was afraid of someone breaking in just because he was at home. When he was on the street, he was just afraid of a stalking homicidal nutcase. These phobias were too specific. Or, Scelerophobia didn't limit to burglars; it also mentioned just "bad men." It was a possibility, though unlikely. He wasn't really afraid of the men themselves, just the acts they committed on him.  
He was starting to wonder if he was simply overreacting from regular and healthy suspicion when he started hearing crashes, breaking glass, and deep, loud thuds. He spun around in his chair, almost unable to breath. Even after he'd stopped spinng, he felt like he was still going around and around and around. He was so terrified that his fear was making him dizzy and ill. This wasn't just fear, he realized. This was solid, cold, _terror_. He was either going to throw up, or lose control of his bladder. Loud noises. Crashes. _There was someone here_. He saw a shadow in the kitchen. He heard footsteps. He knew abruptly that he was going to die. It was just an ice cold feeling that rushed all through him and slapped him in the face again and again, cackling, "You're going to die." He had an extremely lucid vision of a man's head coming from around the corner, and he was holding a gun. He almost felt himself being shot, and nearly felt his blood run down his shirt. It was so real that when he snapped out of it and realized it hadn't happened yet, he was whimpering.  
Kouichi lucked out. The shadow disappeared; it was probably moving to another part of the apartment. The noises had stopped, and there was perfect silence. The guy didn't want Kouichi to know where he was. He was going to sneak up on him. Kouichi looked all around him, certain he was going to be ambushed any second, but he managed to get himself moving. His legs were weak and he felt like he was going to fall, but he managed to run to the door and out of it. He didn't look back. He banged on a neighbor's door until they opened up, and once inside, he called the police.

They investigated the apartment. Kouichi explained the noises he'd heard, and he explained again that he knew he'd been followed for the past couple of weeks. When asked about the knife near the computer, he told them he was suspicious someone was stalking around, and he wanted to be able to defend himself. His mother was called. Ikuna, an elderly neighbor who had been good friends with his grandmother, tried to feed him cookies. Kouichi refused them.  
He sat very still, very observant, watching the door like an enraptured hawk. He refused to talk to Ikuna and pretended she wasn't even there. She fussed over him and worried herself sick with the possibility that he'd been traumatized for life by the experience and would forever be a lifeless vegetable, terrorized into catatonia, when one of the officers came back into the house. He immediately perked up, and asked what they'd found. This one was a dark-haired woman that reminded him of his mother, and Kouichi was sure she was not involved with the stalker. She was too nice. She offered for him to look for himself, and though he was a bit uneasy going back into the apartment, he allowed himself to be lead to it. He hoped nothing had been badly damaged. Or perhaps he'd stolen a bunch of stuff and had run away. He wondered if they'd found the guy in his house. Compared to these thoughts, what he found was shocking.  
He found nothing. That was what amazed him. There were no broken windows. No forced doors. No glass broken, though he'd distinctly heard it. Nothing upturned. Nothing disturbed at all. Everything was perfect. There was absolutely nothing wrong. It was as flawless as it was before everything had started. He'd never been so disturbed by the look of a clean house.  
Kouichi was confused. He insisted that he had heard crashing, breaking class, footsteps. The female officer, who by then was now accompanied by her male partner, calmly told him that nothing had been disturbed. Absolutely nothing. They questioned him about the material found on his computer, for by his rotten luck he hadn't exited out of his research on paranoia and phobias, and they asked if he'd been seen by a doctor for his fears. If he hadn't, they offered to take him to one. There was a volunteer psychiatrist at their station, and would he like to see him? There would be no charge, they offered lightly, having realized that there was little money to be said for this particular family. These gentle hints that Kouichi wasn't in his right mind started pissing him off, and he was further agitated at being called poor. He knew what he'd heard! He'd clearly heard someone breaking and entering! Clearly! The nerve of these guys! How dare they suggest that just because he was a teenager and he was poor, he was looking for attention. He was absolutely not lying or mistaken about this. To prove it, he started describing the situation. Hearing the noises. Seeing the shadow. Hearing the footsteps echoing. Seeing the face. When he got to the face, the officers got interested. They asked what he looked like, and Kouichi started to describe the face, then paused. He remembered that the face hadn't been a real event, or else he'd be dead. His recollection was inconsistent. He looked at his feet and refused to go on talking to them anymore. That didn't stop them; for several minutes they struggled to prod the truth out of him, and he nearly felt as though he was being interrogated, though they repeatedly assured him they were just trying to get the report right. Was there or was there not a man in the home? He didn't know. Did he or did he not hear a window being busted open? Yes, he did. Then why was it unbroken? He didn't know. He was flustered and embarrassed, and he asked them repeatedly to leave. They refused to do so. They stuck around for about an hour trying to pry information out of him, and Kouichi had adapted the habit of refusing to look at them. It was easier.  
He soon became completely positive that these officers were lying to him. They'd been left alone in the apartment, after all. They simply let their fellow conspirator out, cleaned up the place, and once everything was perfect, they had marched back to inform him that he was insane. It was all a big plot; even this nice lady was out to get him. What a sick world he lived in. It wasn't until his mother finally arrived that he felt more at ease, though he was ill with embarrassment as he listened to her get lectured by the officers. They were still concerned, partly about what might've been a teenager pulling an immature prank, or what might be a serious problem. They again offered that he see a psychiatrist for this paranoia. She told them to get the hell out of her house.

Tomoko was sure that her son, who'd never done anything illegal and was always such a good boy, would never purposely pull a fast one on anyone, especially the police. He was usually so respectful of his elders, too, but he refused to talk to her, quite literally. He might grunt or manage a short sentence in response to her questions, but he refused to really talk with her, which bothered her to no end. As the night drew on, he refused dinner too. He stayed in his room, locking the door when he could get away with it, and was usually hiding under his blanket or sitting on the floor and leaning against his bed while staring hard at the wall. As his mother she was going to let him stay home again, but as _a_ mother, she insisted that he go to school. Kouichi begged that she let him stay home again, but having been upset by his reluctance to talk to her and his willful disobedience, she put her foot down and told him that he would be going to school. She understood he was not insane, she had admitted that when Kouichi began a tangent about it. But, quite clearly, nothing had happened. And probably, nothing would happen. He was going to school and that's that.  
Kouichi was disappointed. Other than the horrible fear that someone would attack and kill him, he hated his classmates, and it had been a blessing to be rid of them for the day. It was annoying to have to go back and deal with them while in this state of mind. It was hard enough getting along with them normally, but being so afraid and so wound up, he'd probably burst into tears by second period. All of them disliked him because of his intelligence; he had skipped two grades, which was highly unusual, and instead of getting ready to leave junior high and enter a real high school for the first time, like everyone else his age, he was a sophomore. He was also a bully-magnet, not only because he was he the ideal target, too slim and too weak to resist, but he never told anyone about his torment. He was too shy and too independant; he didn't want to be seen as a useless nerd who couldn't take care of himself. It was torture going to school every day.  
As Kouichi thought about it, he figured that it was the reason his mother didn't buy his illness the second time; she figured that it was a ploy to stay home and safe from those kids. As sorry as she was that he had to deal with it, she could not keep him home when suspecting that it was his only fear. He couldn't blame her. He just blamed that nice lady, who wasn't so nice, who was tricking him and trying to make him feel like he was losing his mind. Bitch.  
Kouichi awoke the next morning having no recollection of falling asleep or being asleep. Perhaps he'd finally passed out and his mother had heaved him into his bed. He was still feeling completely exhausted. As he readied himself for school, he heard an obnoxious ringing in his ears that he couldn't shake. He popped his ears, stuck a finger in them, ran water through them while he took a shower, but nothing worked. He tried television, listening to music, even singing to himself. Didn't work. The ringing overwhelmed the voices and completely drowned them out. When it died down he attempted to tell his mother about it, but all she offered to try were things Kouichi had already attempted, and he finally gave up. When he got to school, the ringing had subsided, and he forgot about it. Surprisingly, instead of being an emotional train-wreck, it was easier than usual to get through the day. Comments and condescending looks simply rolled off of his back as though they were raindrops and he was waterproof. That afternoon, as he walked home, he did not get the sensation he was being followed, and Kouichi forgot about that too. He assumed things were back to normal and took no special interest in the normality of his routine, though in reality, hell was not far off.

In time, the most common bother wasn't his paranoia; it was the ringing in his ears. His paranoia came and went, from powerful bouts of vicious terror to petty nagging suspicions, but the ringing never quite left him. It sometimes became static, like the radio wasn't quite on the right station, and it was a kind of insistent white noise he couldn't quite turn off. He'd stick a finger in his ear to block out the background noise, but he'd still hear it, loud as ever. He bought a pair of ear plugs, but if anything, trying to block it out amplified it. It was painfully bothersome and distracting, especially in school when he struggled to listen to his teachers lecturing, and they were sometimes drowned out by the sound of the ringing. Oftentimes he was asked to recite something, and he had to ask repeatedly for their instruction on what to do, simply because he couldn't hear. He was sent out for it twice, despite the fact that he truly, honestly couldn't hear what was being said, and frankly, sometimes he could barely hear himself. Everyone must've thought he was going deaf. He became exasperated with it when it nearly caused him to get into a fight with a boy, Saburo, who was his constant torment. Unable to hear his taunts due to the ringing, Kouichi had ignored him completely, on accident, until he became so enraged that he grabbed him by the shoulders and swore he would hunt him down one of these days, and beat his face in. Kouichi had no doubt he was telling the truth; Saburo was a vicious bully and he was sure that if he could get away with it, he'd beat him to a bloody pulp. He figured that on that day his paranoia would spike to a heart-stopping high, but, it didn't; not at all. If anything, he was less aware of his surroundings than ever.  
It was worse when he was alone. It got louder, louder, and LOUDER until it gave him a throbbing headache. What was the absolute worst possible thing was when it finally went away and gave him enough peace to sleep, and then to taunt him, it woke him up in the middle of the night. He'd start crying with exasperation and he'd dig his head under his pillow, trying to block it out. It was making him miserable; he almost wished for that horrible paranoia to be back. There could be some kind of plausible explanation for more than a healthy dose of paranoia, but the ringing in his ears was untreatable, and intolerable. He was sure that once his paranoia surfaced again, the ringing would cool down. But, he hadn't suffered an episode like he had that day in over two weeks; the worst he ever did was pause on the sidewalk and glance over his shoulder for a minute or two. It wasn't nearly as bad as it had been, but to make up for it, this static/ringing in his ears persisted with a passion. Couldn't he find a happy medium?

One morning, abruptly, the ringing stopped. There was complete silence. Kouichi started fingering his ear again, wondering if by now he really had gone deaf, it was so quiet. He couldn't remember the last time there hadn't be at least a faint ringing in his ears. Had it died down the same way his paranoia had? He attempted to engage his mother in conversation during breakfast. He could hear himself perfectly. He could hear her perfectly. Kouichi dared to hope that maybe, just maybe, this nasty ordeal was over.  
As he came home from school that day, however, he was hit by a double dose of both. Paralyzing fear gripped him and he stumbled on the sidewalk, clutching his heart and panting. He felt dizzy and anxious and overwhelmingly terrified of everyone around him. It wasn't even just a specific person. There was _fear _crashing in on him from all sides, drowning him in panic. He fell onto his butt, startling the crowd around him, and he started gasping for breath. His stomach was so twisted with terror he nearly did throw up. People around him started moving in on him, and he tried hard to move away from them, screaming at them to stay away. All of them were reaching for him with evil smirks on their faces. A little girl was hiding behind her mother, giggling madly and taunting Kouichi as he was suffocated by the crowd. Their hands were closing in on him. And suddenly, the static started, loud, and steadily got louder. He put his hands over his ears, trying to block out the noise that must've been high enough to make his ears bleed; any second now he'd feel blood dripping through his fingers. A man grabbed his arm. He flailed, screaming, and pulled himself away. Then he flung himself to the ground, shaking his head and pressing hard into his ears, trying to get the ringing to stop, stop, stop! He vaguely recalled being dragged to his feet by two men he didn't know, and he was mumbling words whose meaning he couldn't even begin to fathom as they drug him out of such a heavy traffic area.  
When he came to his senses, he was sitting in what appeared to be a tea shop. Instead of that ringing, ringing, ringing in his ears, soft music floated through his head, courtesy of a few speakers. One of the men had stayed behind, and he was asking whether he was alright. Kouichi didn't recognize him, and he asked who he was. The man looked flustered, and informed him that not long ago, Kouichi had broken his glasses during his mad thrashing while he pulled him out of the sidewalk before he got trampled. Kouichi didn't remember that at all. He remembered horrible people grabbing at him and smirking at him and laughing at him, but not this nice man helping him. Why couldn't he at least recall the action? Even if he couldn't place the face, surely he must remember the action he performed.  
Well, now that there was no crippling fear or ringing in his ears, he was also embarrassed and flustered. He apologized for breaking his glasses, despite not being able to recall doing so, and offered to pay to get them fixed. The man, a rather forgiving type, waved it off. He offered to buy Kouichi some tea to calm him down, but Kouichi insisted on not troubling the man. He offered to drive him home if he still felt weak, or at least to a doctor's, and Kouichi vehemently refused, especially at the hint of being taken to a doctor. He was so insistent in being helpful that Kouichi began to feel that he had other intentions, perhaps to actually take him somewhere secluded to rape him. Even this nice man was against him. He nearly started crying again, suddenly feeling the whole world was on his shoulders and pulling him down, but he refrained. He wanted to be cool. He had to maintain that he was perfectly normal, and nothing was wrong at all.

The man eventually left. Kouichi somehow found his way home, and locked himself up in his room for the rest of the night. For a few hours he felt sick and depressed and sorry for himself, but he quickly fell out of that; he was never one to mope around. Instead, he returned to his research. He found another possibility, Xenophobia, the fear of strangers or foreigners. But that was a dead-end. In that case, every single person he ever met for the first time would send him into blind panic, which wasn't consistent with his experience. He couldn't remember ever seeing that man in the tea shop before, yet he was not afraid of him until he started trying to molest him.  
He refused to eat again. Tomoko, now desperately worried about her son, did nearly try to take him to a doctor, and it was only through Kouichi's insistent refusal and reminders of expensive doctor-visits that she didn't. He promised if something was really wrong, he'd tell her. He fell asleep very easily that night, but woke again to increased static. But, the static was different. It was loud, but it had a soft quality to it. And somehow, the static was calmer. It wasn't senseless static. He could swear that he could just, just hear a hesitant whisper amongst the white noise. He strained to listen to it, to somehow catch the echoing words in his ears, but fell asleep before he could manage it. He awoke to silence. Then, as he was brushing his teeth, he heard the breathy whispers that were nearly drowned out by the ringing. Kouichi didn't like to be dramatic, but it sounded as though someone was desperately trying to reach him. He listened hard, but couldn't catch its words, no matter how hard he tried. He was in third period that day when he finally caught the breathy voice sound out his name, "_Kouichi_..." After that, he became intrigued. He spent the morning listening closely for the breathy sounds, but they soon receded again. Despite not being sure whether he'd even heard it at all, the rest of the day he listened for the voice, and to his teachers, he seemed to be spacing out. They were concerned, but Kouichi, eager as he was to catch the voice again, did not see anything wrong at all.

That night, as he and his mother watched the news, Kouichi's eye caught a particular story. A man was caught stalking an eleven year old as he walked home from school every day. He was already on parole after kidnapping and molesting another twelve year old boy, and this was more than enough to throw him back in jail. Daiki Iwamura was his name. Kouichi pointed it out to his mother excitedly, and while she commented that it was awful, she didn't connect it to anything in particular. But Kouichi was relieved to see the story. Iwamura had followed his first victim for three weeks before breaking into his house, and taking him hostage by gunpoint. The similarities were uncanny. Perhaps he really wasn't insane, after all. Heck, for all he knew, he was psychic. He'd really had a vision. He'd known there was a creep running around the city, and his instinct told him to be careful. It made such perfect sense that for the first time in days, he sat back into the couch and was perfectly content with the world. Not soon after, the static resumed hissing in his ear again, somewhat dampening his mood. He didn't catch any type of voice behind the white noise until later that night, as he tried to go to bed. It whispered his name again.  
_Kouichi_.  
It was a feminine voice, very soft, very gentle, easily flooded out by the violent ringing. Kouichi wondered if it was something like his subconscious talking to him. Tomorrow was no school; he didn't have to go to bed now, he'd just felt tired. More awake and eager than he'd been in weeks, he turned on his light, and leaned against the wall, straining to hear the voice again. It sounded like breathing. The static seemed to be filtering out. For weeks it had been like the radio was tuned to the wrong frequency, but now it was as though someone was finally fixing the dial. Soft music began to tease his hearing, sometimes blocked out again by the static and ringing because it still wasn't quite aligned, but it was much more pleasant. Kouji couldn't place the music, but it was like nothing he'd ever heard before. The feminine voice seemed to be humming along with the melody.  
_Kouichi_. This voice was more masculine, but still breathy and soft.  
He wondered to himself what this noise was. He might be able to buy that he'd had a premonition on account of Iwamura, (he was a believer in the paranormal; he became quite serious when discussing such events) but what of this noise?  
"What are you?" he wondered out loud, not expecting a response, but through the music, the masculine voice replied to him. It licked softly through the gentle music like the tip of a dancing flame, and as he caught it, Kouichi wondered if he'd heard right, or if he'd heard it at all.  
_I am an angel._  
The female's voice sung to the music just a little louder, but Kouichi couldn't differentiate the music from the voice. They were in such perfect harmony, both of them so sweet and so gentle. She did not sing words, but her voice was...well, heavenly. His mother and grandmother had raised him in a semi-religious atmosphere, with only just enough teaching to keep his morals straight, but not enough to suffocate him with the constant fear of going to Hell. But as a result, even accounting how simply he accepted he had been having a premonition in Iwamura's case, it was surprisingly easy to swallow he might be in contact with angels, though he was a bit more doubtful. Why would they be talking to him, of all people? He was about to continue speaking to the angel when he abruptly became extremely tired, so tired that he couldn't even keep his eyes open. His lamp seemed to turn itself off magically, and for a few seconds after he heard the 'click,' he saw a halo of light still floating above the shade. His head just fell back limply into his pillow, and in moments he was teetering between deep sleep and faint consciousness.  
_'The angel,'_ he realized. '_She's putting me to sleep so I don't question them.'_  
Her humming died down a bit, lower and lower until he couldn't hear it at all, and then he finally fell asleep. He awoke only once, for a brief moment, as the masculine angel called his name again, and then he dozed. It was the best sleep he'd gotten in a while.

By the morning, he'd completely accepted that the two heavenly voices were angels, for sure. He waited to hear them again, blocking himself off from the rest of the world and waiting very patiently in his room, sitting as though he were a Buddhist in deep meditation. He strained for their voices, and was becoming disheartened at their silence when he finally started hearing the ringing again. He eagerly listened for them, absorbing the sounds greedily for any sign of their presence. Finally, after hours of sitting perfectly still, all day long, he heard the masculine voice painfully gasp through the static.  
_Kouichi_.  
He was really in contact with angels! Really, truly! He wanted to talk to them again.  
_'If they're angels, they can read my thoughts, right?'_ he thought, thinking his questions as hard as possible, but receiving no reply. Instead, he voiced his question.  
"Who are you?" Kouichi asked. Last night, he'd asked, "What are you," and was told what they were. This did not answer who they were.  
The masculine angel seemed to do the talking. The female fell into the background, and began her siren song. _Nothing we._  
Kouichi was confused. "You said you were angels."  
_Are we._  
"Are you?"  
_None_.  
Kouichi took a guess, "You're angels, but you have no names?"  
_None_.  
"Was that a yes or no?"  
_No.  
_"No?"  
_Yes.  
_"Yes or no?"  
_Yes or no._  
Kouichi started considering their responses deeper than their appearance. The sentences seemed to be broken up, and when he really thought about it, they were backwards. In response to his question, the male had replied, "Are We," as a statement, not a question. Thought backwards, it seemed to be, "We Are." Did he mean, "We are angels?"  
_Kouichi_.

"Kouichi?" He looked over his shoulder. His mother was calling him from behind his door. He'd locked it hours ago. He stood up, and practically keeled over at the pain in his legs. The pain was so intense; he couldn't believe he could feel so much pain just from sitting for a few hours. Once he recovered, he stumbled to the door and unlocked it to allow her in. He was disappointed that his conversation had been cut short, and as if to further disappoint him, the ringing dramatically subsided.  
"Don't lock the door anymore," she chided. "It bothers me."  
"Yes, Kaa-san."  
She paused, then, "Kouichi-chan, is there something wrong?"  
"No, Kaa-san." He wanted to be left alone. She insisted on talking.  
"You haven't eaten all day."  
"It hasn't been very long since I last ate."  
"It's nearly midnight."  
Kouichi was shocked out of his petty grudge. He looked at his clock, and gaped at it. He'd woken up at eight. It was a quarter to midnight. He hadn't realized how long he'd been sitting in his room. He knew it had been a few hours, but, wow, an entire day passed without him batting an eye. Where had the time gone? He could only remember a little of it passing at all. He was suddenly painfully aware that he hadn't used the bathroom in a long, long time, and now that his legs were coming out of numbness brought on by extreme pain, they ached horribly, as though someone had spent hours beating his legs with an extremely blunt object.  
"Kouichi," his mother reached down and hugged him tightly, and he tried to hug her back, though he was awkward about it. He was fighting not to lose control of his bladder; over twelve hours of not using a toilet was a very, very painful thing. "Please, don't worry about food. Eat, eat all you want. The last thing I want you to do is go hungry. I'd never forgive myself."  
Now Kouichi felt miserable for making his mother worry. Did she think he was going anorexic on her on account of the cost of food? "I just haven't been hungry. I wasn't not eating on purpose."  
She asked if she could make him a late meal. To sooth both of their worries, Kouichi agreed, but not until he sped off to a bathroom. His mother did not ask why he hadn't used it all day when perfectly capable of doing so, and he didn't offer. They each had a late dinner, and Kouichi was suddenly ravenous. He'd been skipping meals for days without even realizing he was doing it. It was catching up on him; he'd already lost a little weight that made a dramatic impact on him just because of his slender build. She gave him another speech about no matter how little money there was, she never, ever wanted him to think he couldn't eat. She was thrilled when he asked for more. As she spooned him more rice, he heard the masculine angel call him.  
_Food_.  
For the first time, it had a speck of emotion in it. It seemed longing, needing, desiring. Kouichi was excited by this progress; the angel possessed a human quality: emotion.

He promised he would eat more, stop skipping meals, and if he got hungry later, he wouldn't hesitate to grab a snack. He quickly managed to escape back to his room when he began to hear the static return. She bade him good night, once again hinted that if anything was wrong, to please come tell her, and then left, clearly still concerned. Kouichi immediately closed his door, locked it, and returned to the same position he'd been in all day. Now that he was conscious of the time, he noted that it was four a.m. when he finally heard the angels speaking to him again.  
_Kouichi_.  
"Why do you only talk to me sometimes?" he asked. "Why not more often?"  
_People_.  
"You don't want to talk to other people?"  
_Kouichi._  
"You'll only talk to me?"  
No response.  
"Can you see me all the time?"  
_No time_.  
"Do you understand the concept of time?"  
_Kouichi_.  
Kouichi started losing his patience. "Can you talk normally?"  
_Kouichi_. This was useless.

Then, something happened that sent Kouichi into a panic. The male started moaning, yelling, and groaning, as if in inexplicable pain. The female never stopped singing. The song was at its peak beauty when suddenly, all trace of the male disappeared. What had happened to him? Then, suddenly, he heard the female speak to him.  
_Kouichi_.  
She had not spoken to him in a long time. Her voice was so beautiful.  
"What happened to him?"  
_He could not communicate_.  
Kouichi was shocked. This one could speak in full sentences. Maybe he'd finally get some answers.  
"Are you really angels?"  
_Yes_.  
His excitement swelled. "What are your names?"  
_No such thing_.  
"Where did you come from?"  
_No such place._  
"Why are you talking to me?"  
_No such person._  
Now he was confused. He could buy that they had no names and maybe couldn't name where they'd come from, but he certainly existed. "But you are talking to me."  
_You do not exist._  
"Yeah, I do. I exist right here. I sleep, I wake up, I go to school. I have a mother. I have a father. I have a brother. I exist."  
_You are dead._  
His heart rate increased. Did...did she mean he wasn't actually alive? "How can I be dead?" But then, if he was dead, wouldn't he be in denial about it?  
_Accident_.  
Kouichi flashed back to years ago; the stairs, the fall, the hospital. Had he really died on that stretcher? Was it just his spirit, unwilling to accept death, that inhabited his body? Was he some kind of zombie? "But, how can I be dead?"  
_I will prove it. You cannot die_.  
"But how?" he pressed, feeling his own pulse. It was strong, and he felt warm; he felt alive.  
_Take a knife. Make a cut on the underside of your arm, precisely seven inches from the tip of your finger. Let it bleed all night. Anyone else would die from such a cut. You will not. You cannot die._  
"You expect me to actually cut myself?" He scoffed and shook his head. "No way. If something happens and I do end up getting taken to a doctor, cuts on my arm will just make them think I'm even more insane."  
_After it has bled until the sun is high, press a rag soaked with salt water and garlic powder onto the wound. It will heal. This will prove to you that I am an angel, and you are dead._  
"How does that prove anything?"  
_No live human could survive that much bleeding all night, and no human could heal the cut that fast. I will heal it for you once my point is made._  
"Absolutely not. Angel or not, I'm not going to do something like that." He planned to stand up, get into bed, and go to sleep. It was very late. But as soon as he stood up, he suddenly felt like she could be trusted, that she knew what she was talking about. He could cut his arm and bleed it out, and he would not die. He knew what she said was completely true. But should he try it?  
"What if...I die?" he asked her, looking around as if hoping to find an angel's face floating there. There was not. The ringing had gone. She was no longer there to aid him.

As hesitant as he was, he was more disturbed that he might not be alive. He figured if he was about to bleed to death, he'd feel it and he'd know it, and he'd know when it had gone too far. He snuck out of his room, silently getting the sharpest knife he could find. Twice he could've sworn he heard his mother coming into the kitchen, but all was still. No one would see him or catch him doing this. He eyed the knife suspiciously; it really wouldn't be like that, right? He wasn't dead. But what if he killed himself trying to prove that...? No, no way. He'd know when to stop. He knew when enough was enough. He just had to prove it to himself first, and that would be all.  
He smuggled it back into his room, his heart pounding with uncertainty and fear. He'd heard that rubbing alcohol would help cut into skin better, and he almost went to fetch some, but decided against him. If his mother caught him walking around in the middle of the night, she'd ask questions. She wouldn't understand that he'd been in contact with angels. As he brought it to his arm, he stopped as rational thoughts finally thought probing his mind.  
"This is stupid," Kouichi said to himself, halting as the cool blade touched his skin. "At least, this is going to make me look like I'm depressed. This can't be true. There's got to be some other way to tell that I'm not dead."  
_How else can I talk to you?_  
He looked around again. It was completely silent. The voices were usually preceded by a symphony of ringing and song, but hers had sounded from no where.  
_How else can I communicate with you...if you were not dead?_  
What she said made perfect sense. And she was an angel. She couldn't lie, or she would not have gone to heaven. That wouldn't add up.  
_I will save you._  
Comforted by the angel, he approximated seven inches on his arm. His estimation was precisely where a vein was located, and he figured this was her intention. Cut into a vein, let it bleed, and if he lived and spontaneously healed, that proved it. She was an angel, and he was really dead. Did that make him an angel too? No, he'd never been to heaven. But if she was wrong, and if he cut into the vein, let it bleed and he died...  
_I will save you._  
Almost as though on its own, the knife dug into his flesh, deep. His brain exploded in panic as it registered 'pain', and he dropped the knife, yelling softly. Blood seeped up from the wound at an alarming rate, and combined with the fact it was horribly painful, the blood terrified him. He whimpered and held his arm, suddenly not trusting the angel at all, suddenly frantic to find a phone. Seeing so much blood oozing out of his own arm was like a slap in the face; this was ridiculous. Ridiculous. Why would he cut his own arm? There was something wrong with him. He had to call an ambulance. There was too much blood. Far, far, far too much blood. What had he done? What on earth had he just done?  
_I will save you._  
Despite himself, Kouichi felt his eyes closing. He was just so tired, he couldn't help but falling asleep. But, no! If he fell asleep, he would die! At the rate he was bleeding, he would never wake up. He had to get to a phone, had to get to a hospital, had to stop the bleeding. Oh no, there was blood everywhere. He fell onto his pillow and passed out, shaking in terror before darkness engulfed him completely.

...

Kouichi awoke with a scream in his throat. His arm. The blood. Oh, Jesus, the blood. It was everywhere. He leapt out of bed and reached for his cell phone; his fingers grabbed at air. It was almost always on his nightstand, and damn it all, if this wasn't the one time it wasn't. He was in shock and couldn't move; his heart was pounding and his breathing was strained; was he dying? Was he about to die after allowing so much precious blood flow from his veins? Inevitably, his eyes drifted to his clock. 12:13. He'd slept for hours, and he was still alive. But he was still bleeding, all over his sheets. They were soaked with blood. He didn't have much longer to go at this rate. He flung open his door, rushing to the bathroom to find a washcloth. As he hurried into the kitchen, he found a note. His mother was shopping. Thank God. It would give him a chance to clean up the blood. Oh, sweet Jesus, the blood!  
He prepared a bowl of heavily salted warm water, and tossed in a few capfuls of garlic powder. He stirred it frantically, then dipped the cloth into it, and plopped it soaking onto his skin. He didn't even have the heart to look at his arm; he knew what he'd see. He'd begun crying by the time he refreshed the rag and replaced it soaking onto his arm; oh, why had he even tried? Was risking his life really worth it? That was no angel; that was a demon. She was a demon searching for minions to recruit to Hell. People who committed suicide went to hell because suicide was murder, and because their life ended as a result of it, they had no time to repent for the sin. She'd tricked him with her siren song, and she'd killed the male. He was really the angel. He'd struggled to warn him. Oh, God, his arm. It stung.  
By the time he finally got up the courage to remove the rag and assess just how bad the cut was, his face was dripping with tears. He didn't even know what he would say to his mother. She would commit him to a psychiatric ward for mentally disturbed teenagers. He'd never be able to convince her he hadn't been trying to kill himself. Even if he hadn't lost enough blood to die and he could get rid of the blatant stains all over his bed, she'd eventually notice the scar. She'd probably notice the missing knife. Kouichi was a rotton liar; the truth would come out sooner or later. It was inevitable. He choked on a sob, caught his breath, wiped his eyes off on his sleeve and finally looked at his arm, expecting the worst. What he saw was shocking.  
There was nothing there. Nothing. No healing cut, no tell-tale scar, no blood, nothing. A cold thought suddenly pierced his brain; had he been imagining it? The whole thing? As he looked to the bowl, he sighed in relief; he hadn't. There was blood on the rag. There was blood in the water. He had been cut. He wasn't crazy. The angel had healed him, just like she'd said she would.

Kouichi hesitantly returned to his room. There was no blood on the sheets. No blood on the pillow. No blood on the floor. That should be impossible. He'd bled all over his bed, all over the floor, all over everything. He'd soaked his sheets with his blood because it had come so quickly from cutting a vein, it was unstoppable. He'd been bleeding for hours. Yet, there was no proof he'd done so. His entire room was free of the nasty fluid except on one, single place: the knife. The hated knife was on the ground, its top covered with dry blood, proving that he had done it.  
_I promised_.  
He started crying again, thanking her profusely for saving his life. Then, he realized, that was wrong. The angel had simply healed his wound so that no one would ever know what had happened. He had been lying in bed for hours with his arm pumping his precious blood into the sheets. No one could survive that unless...unless...  
He collapsed to the ground, sobbing. He was dead. He was really dead.  
_Kouichi_.  
The woman sounded sympathetic, sorrowful, understanding. She was the only one who could possibly understand what he was going through. She was so kind, so wonderful to help him through this. Kouichi finally fell into his bed, clutching his pillow tight for comfort as he tried to accept this horrible truth, and she coddled him in his mind with soothing songs and encouraging words. The male tried to break through her songs, and he was blocked out. Every so often, Kouichi would hear the male painfully gasp his name, but as he grew to accept his death and grew to accept the woman, he heard less and less of him until he could no longer hear him at all.  
"Do I really deserve this?" he finally whimpered, practically overwhelmed by depression. If he weren't already dead, he'd have considered killing himself. But apparently, since he was trapped in some kind of purgatory of lunacy, that was impossible.  
_Of course not. You're the least most deserving person. Your soul should have moved on to the good place._  
"Why hasn't it?" he asked, falling back into his pillow and resenting that he'd been cheated of peace after death.  
_You haven't accepted death._  
"I accept it!" he cried, sitting up. "I accept that I'm dead! Then please, why don't I just pass on? I don't want to live like this! This isn't fair. This isn't fair..." He started crying into his knees again.  
_You are unhappy. Your unhappiness prevents you from moving on. You must destroy your unhappiness before you can move on. _  
"How?" he sniffled. He was desperate. The past few weeks had been miserable, torturous weeks for him. He was willing to do anything to fix this.  
_What makes you unhappy?_  
"I...I don't know. I thought I was pretty happy until..." He thought about the ringing, the terror, the fear, the voices. All of it had made him miserable. But the angel was pushing him in another direction.  
_They make you unhappy._  
"Who?"  
_Those who don't accept you._  
"I...people are usually pretty good with me. It's not a person who's making me unhappy."  
_They hate you._  
He had a thought; "You don't mean...school, do you?"  
_What makes you unhappy?_  
"They don't, though," he insisted. "I get sort of exasperated at them, but I don't hate them. They aren't wrong, anyway. I don't belong there."  
_You must destroy what makes you unhappy. Once you have accepted all that was wrong in life before your death, you may pass on._  
"How do I do that?"  
She did not respond. Kouichi was used to getting an answer after asking a question, and he was surprised at how silent it was.  
"Hello?"

She was gone. There wasn't even a ringing in her place. This complete, utter silence was uncomfortable, and now that his angel was gone, he felt vulnerable. He checked the windows, checked the doors, and checked the rooms, making sure no one was in there. The time his mother had indicated on the note was eleven-thirty; she would be back soon. He hurried to empty the bowl in the sink, and washed it with bleach so that it would have no bloody scent. With it he scrubbed down the kitchen as quick as he could, hoping to pass off the smell in the sink as just the remnants of his cleaning. Though there was no blood on his sheets, they made him sick, so he threw them in the washing machine. And finally, he wrapped the knife around in the washcloth, and scurried out of the building to the street. He ran through a block or two until he came to a dumpster, and he disposed of the only evidence remaining that revealed his bloody experiment. Once, just once, immediately after throwing away his knife, he got the horrible, heart-stopping feeling that someone was behind him. No! No one could see what he'd done, but there was a witness! He couldn't allow them to tell; no one could know!  
As he turned around, he saw no one. Just an empty street. No one had seen him and his shame. He nearly started crying again; how long would he be forced to live in this realm between Heaven and Hell? When could he just finally die in peace?  
Just as he arrived back home, he found his mother had returned a split second before, bringing groceries. She asked where he'd gone, and he said he'd gone for a walk. Though his arm was not bloody and there was no scar to give him away, he hid his arm from her obsessively, as though there would suddenly be a revealing mark on it, telling all that had gone on since her departure. He wasn't insane. But no one else would understand that. Only he and the angel could understand what was happening to him. No one else would. He felt so alone.


	2. Chapter 2

_Peacemaker_

Kouichi decided it was unnecessary to worry the rest of his family about the strange installments of his life, especially after the angel seemed to disappear almost completely after his experiment. While it was inevitable that his mother should notice something was slightly off, there was certainly no reason to bother Kouji with whatever was wrong with him, and especially not his father. Kouji could probably be trusted, but his father...his father had slight issues with "abnormal" people. And he had to be honest, if he started talking about angels and being dead and cutting himself to prove he was dead, well, he'd be committed to a pysch ward faster than he could say, "But the angel," to prove them wrong.

Thus, when he visited Kouji for the first time in quite a few weeks, he did not reiterate his most recent adventures with him. He had not talked to his brother in a long time, and he didn't even know about the supposed break-in that had happened weeks earlier; he was honest his brother, but he was not willing to make him worry. Besides, of all things that had happened, the most dramatic would be the knowledge of his death. While Kouichi could easily accept the paranormal, Kouji was definitely a critic, and who knew how he would react to being told his brother was dead, and being told this by the very brother who had apparently croaked years ago, too? Still, as it was the less dramatic of the most recent happenings of his life, Kouichi announced his arrival with, "So, I had to call the police a few weeks ago." It was supposed to sound extremely interesting, like that had been the most interesting thing that had happened to him in months and boy-have-you-missed-out to be hearing about it so late. Compared to the angels and his death, it seemed ridiculous and tedious, and his tone came out that way.  
"Oh?" said Kouji, who was sitting on the edge of his bed and ignoring him almost completely. He was playing a game Kouichi had heard of, but had never seen; an American invention called "Guitar Hero III." He was on "Expert" mode, and he couldn't bear to be distracted. He was of utmost seriousness when he played this game, and he was very good at it; his fingers flew over the colorful little buttons like a true expert, though he was a mediocre guitar player in real life. As soon as he hit the last note and finished the song, he turned to Kouichi, now looking properly concerned. The elder still heard that obnoxious note ringing in his ear, amplified, and pounding into his head as if someone had taken a recording of the note, and was blasting it through gigantic speaker while it looped non-stop. '_Why did his television have to be so loud?' _he thought, very annoyed.  
"Why exactly did you have to call the police?"  
Kouichi didn't quite answer yet, and so in silence, they watched his score tally. All that Kouichi knew about this game was that it had been purchased on the internet from America, considering it was not available in Japan yet, and it was completely in English. Kouji's English reading skills were minimal.  
"You got a B," Kouichi informed his brother as he squinted at the screen, and this irritated him. The only letters he recognized were "A" and "F", and he constantly interchanged B, C, and D.  
"I did not miss a single note," he told the game angrily.  
"It's a B," Kouichi confirmed. He was expecting Kouji to immediately and challengingly pick the song again and play it until he got an A, but he just sighed, and put down the guitar. Kouichi didn't touch it; he knew he was useless at playing games like this, as he had tried before with Japanese takes on "Guitar Hero" type games. He simply had no hand-eye coordination, and he couldn't absorb the notes fast enough to hit the correct buttons.

"So, about those police," Kouji prompted as he propped his head.  
Kouichi shrugged. "I've felt like I've been followed the past couple of weeks, and a few weeks ago, I thought I heard someone breaking in." Kouji looked interested, as Kouichi knew he'd be. He watched crime shows.  
"Why didn't you call me? You know I'd be interested in that kind of thing."  
"I...we were busy. I'm sorry," he apologized. Truthfully, at the time he hadn't wanted his brother to know, but now that this particular episode was the least of his problems, it was nice talking to him about it, even if most of his retelling would have to be a lie for the sake of his brother's sanity. Kouji waved off the apology and put no more thought into hearing about this so late.  
"Did you see anyone?" he asked eagerly.  
That one note was still ringing in his ear, and he asked Kouji about it. He said he didn't hear it at all, and teased that maybe Kouichi was just too sensitive to his "Hard American Rock" music. As he stuck a finger in his ear, Kouichi mumbled that nails on a chalkboard sounded better than his "American Rock," and Kouji chuckled smugly.  
"But did you see anyone?" he insisted, and Kouichi looked to the ground, sort of embarrassed.  
"Turns out no one had broken in at all." Kouji looked sort of confused, and disappointed.  
"How could you mess that up? Someone breaking in is a pretty unique sound."  
That's what he thought. Even now, Kouichi was absolutely positive he'd heard crashes and glass breaking noises. Those noises were just too specific to have been anything but someone breaking in. And the FOOTSTEPS. Heavy boots on cheap linoleum, he couldn't even imagine how you could mistake that. There was no way he was mistaken. But the police told otherwise. No one had broken in. What's more, no one had been following him. The angel had been disturbingly silent the past couple of days, and as a result, his paranoia was increasing again. He'd become obsessed with the fact that the police were into some kind of sick game almost to the point where he was beginning to suspect that the police themselves were the ones following him. They'd even followed him to Kouji's, which he was absolutely positive about, and only police seemed to be capable of the manpower to pull that off. None the less, he didn't tell Kouji about how certain he was the police were lying or how he'd had such a vivid vision of being shot or how he'd cut his own arm and bled it to prove he was dead. Instead of worrying him with all that while knowing how crazy it sounded, he outlined the breaking-and-entering to him, and it was interesting enough to sound like he was not insane, and not paranoid.

"That's really strange," he commented after an extremely abridged version of a problem he'd long since moved past. Kouji, however, was intrigued. "And it bothered you enough to call the police?"  
Kouichi started fingering his ear again. He still heard that note ringing, ringing, ringing in it, obnoxiously, and he hadn't heard that kind of sound since before the angel had come to him. Was she coming now? But why that irritating note from the game instead of the beautiful sounds from before? He asked Kouji if they could leave his room, and he shrugged.  
His dog came bounding over the second the door was open, and he pat him just to acknowledge that he existed. If the dog was given no attention, he would not leave you alone, and Kouichi didn't particularly appreciate the dog trailing him. The Shepherd shouldn't have even aroused the vaguest memories of a Labrador, but he was suddenly reminded of the old man and his puppy. The memory was from so long ago, he couldn't even imagine how he'd remembered it. He got uneasy; was this another premonition? Was he reminded of the old man and his puppy because they meant him harm? With a jolt he had another idea; how could he be harmed? He was dead, right? Even if someone was still after him, after all this time, it wouldn't matter because he was dead, right? As they arrived in the living room, he took just a quick peek outside the blinds. There was no one around. Kouichi was embarrassed that his paranoia was returning after taking so long to get over it, and he hurriedly let them return. He had another flash of being stabbed in the eye, of the knife twisting and digging into his skull, and he shivered. He wished his angel would come to him and sing to him; she made him feel so safe. When he returned to Kouji, he was raising a brow at him.  
"Sorry," Kouichi apologized again. He found himself apologizing for his behavior a lot. "I guess I've just been really paranoid lately."  
"Clearly."  
He snuck into the kitchen for a moment, and just like that, he was alone. Hearing him in the kitchen brought back powerful memories of that day. There was someone in the kitchen. The hair on the back of his neck raised, and he started getting goose bumps. He told himself there was no reason to be afraid, and that it wasn't a big deal. Kouji just went into the kitchen for a minute. That repetitive note got louder and louder and louder.  
He heard another crash in the kitchen; the sound of something bluntly hitting the floor. Kouji moaned in pain. Kouichi started breathing rapidly, and his paranoia started crashing into him full force. He backed into the wall, watching the kitchen obsessively, completely panicked. It was Kouji in there. Kouji. That's all. He could swear he smelled blood; but how could he smell blood all the way out here? It wasn't real. This wasn't really happening. _His _head came around again, smirking at him. The guy. The one who was in the kitchen. But he didn't exist! Or did he? He couldn't be hallucinating. He couldn't be imagining the same guy, the exact same guy, twice in a row. Hallucinations didn't work that way. They just didn't. Ignorant of Kouichi's inner turmoil, he waved his knife. Knife? Was it the same guy? He'd had a gun before.  
He abruptly remembered the eyeball looking through the window at him and digging the blade into his eye, and feeling so much pain he thought he would pass out. Remembered, feeling? No, he remembered the memory, not the action, because if someone had really twisted a knife into his eye, he'd be blind. What the hell...? Kouichi choked and started crying; he blinked and blinked and tried to tell himself this wasn't happening, but it was, it was happening. It really was. He approached him. Kouichi tried to etch his face into his mind to give a true description of it, but he found himself unable to focus on the face. There was nothing specific about it, and even as he saw it, in his mind, he couldn't register details about it. There was nothing about it he could really put a finger on. He put the blade to his throat, and he closed his eyes again. He could feel it against his pulse, he really could. This was really happening. Ringing, ringing in his ears-

"Kouichi?" he opened his eyes. Kouji was standing in front of him with two cans of Pepsi in his hands, and looking very concerned. VERY concerned. Terrified, even. Why did he look so afraid? "What's wrong?"  
He panted, trying to catch his breath. Kouji hadn't been killed. He'd heard him fall to the floor and heard him grunt in pain. But there he was, standing like everything was completely normal. He put a hand to his throat where he'd felt the knife there seconds before. He knew he wasn't insane. It had really happened. But all this normalcy...? Something was screwy. Someone was trying to mess around with him. He started gagging and felt totally nauseated, but he was alive. Thank God, he was alive. '_Or am I?' _he wondered dryly. He found that so amusing he started laughing; it was harsh, barking laughter, and it disturbed him.  
"Nii-san?" Kouji dropped the sodas and rushed to his brother. He put one hand on Kouichi's shoulder and one to his forehead. He felt his pulse. He held fingers in front of his face, asking Kouichi to count them, but he didn't respond. His heart was pounding out of his chest; he was still panicking. He was still here! He was still here!  
"Nii-san," he called again, shaking him. "Nii-san, what happened?"  
Kouichi was going to tell him, to warn him, but he suddenly started glaring at him. He was angry at him. He knew what had happened! Kouichi himself had heard his cry when he went down! He might mistake the sound of footsteps, but he couldn't imagine Kouji's voice. He knew his brother too well; when Kouji voices pain, he's really in pain. Truly. He knew what was going on. Why did he pretend that nothing was wrong?  
_Unless he was in on it too!_ He was seething at his brother. His own brother was faking him out and trying to scare him. He couldn't even believe it. How DARE he go to such lengths to do this to him! Kouichi was going to start yelling at him when he realized he was starting to cry. Why was he crying? He smacked his hands away, and the tears flowed freely down, unashamed. He was hurt, and he was upset. For real.  
"Kouichi?"  
Why would he be crying unless he honestly didn't know what was wrong? _Unless this was a trick too!_ Kouji and his crocodile tears...but, Kouji never cried. Not unless something was really wrong, or he was really upset. But then what if he was using his knowledge of that to try and trick him again?

For someone trying to trick with tears, they didn't last long. He wiped them away, and he started glaring at his elder brother, angry and annoyed. Now he just grabbed his shoulders again, and looked straight into his eyes.  
"What happened?" he demanded, and Kouichi finally gave up trying to figure his angle. Maybe there was no angle. Maybe his brother really wasn't trying to harm him.  
"I...nothing," he finally said, feeling totally depleted. "Nothing happened."  
"Like hell," Kouji snarled, even as another tear broke free from his eyes. Kouichi felt a rush of emotion for his little brother; if only he could tell him everything. The paranoia, the man, the song, the angel, the knife; he knew he would be ridding himself of an enormous load. But if he did, his skeptic of a brother would think he was crazy. He'd never understand, never.  
"Come on," he said soothingly, hugging Kouji back, and immediately he started crying again, then just as quickly, stopped. He wasn't one to openly display his emotions. "There's nothing wrong. It was just...nothing."  
"...You scared me, Kouichi," Kouji tried to laugh, but his voice cracked and he sounded partly hysterical. "You started...twitching all over and making these noises, and your eyes went weird, like you were having a seizure or something..."  
"A...seizure?" From receiving another vision? He'd heard of psychics having visions and predicting the future, but at the cost of serious physical damage. Perhaps having a seizure or whatever had happened had been the price to pay for seeing the future. HAD he seen the future? Was a man going to kill Kouji one day, and then come right for him? He'd heard his brother's cry of pain so clearly, so sharply, he could still hear it resonating in his ears.  
_Kouichi._  
The angel's voice came from no where, and he heard it so clearly he could swear he was in the room. Kouichi actually looked around for the angel, expecting to see him standing right beside him or right behind Kouji, but he was nowhere. He'd heard the male this time, right? Maybe he wasn't dead.  
"Nii-san?" He gently shook him again. "Please, please tell me what's going on."  
_Kou-  
_The male's voice was cut short. He started hearing the static again. Was she coming?  
"Nothing, nothing's going on." He realized he was leaning back and completely dependant on the wall, and he forced himself up. He hit a wave of vertigo as he teetered on his feet, and Kouji held him all the while, pestering him like a mother hen. His brother was worse than his real mother.  
_Kouichi._

The woman was soothing. Hearing her voice was like taking a sip of hot, honey tea when your throat is very sore. He momentarily wondered why her arrival was not preceded by music, but just having her with him again, he quickly got over it. Kouji was still insisting that Kouichi tell him what was going on, but he was growing more and more skeptical that anything had been wrong in the first place. His brother seemed perfectly fine. He was talking perfectly fine. He moved perfectly fine. Why wasn't he perfectly fine? Was there any proof that he wasn't?  
_Kouichi.  
_Feeling much more at ease and no longer wound up tight with paranoia and fear, he playfully ruffled his brother's hair, an action he absolutely despised. "Come on, 'touto-chan. It was a freak accident. It'll probably never happen again." Now more annoyed and embarrassed than concerned, he mumbled in agreement. He reached down to pick up the two cans of Pepsi he'd dropped, and he returned to the kitchen to get new ones. Already embarrassed at his overreaction to whatever had happened to his brother, he wasn't looking forward to opening an exploding can. Uneasy, Kouichi just had to follow him to the kitchen this time. Perfectly normal. There was no one in it, and Kouji acted perfectly normal inside it, completely calm and at ease, clearly never having been knocked to the ground or attacked, or anything else that would cause discomfort in entering this room for normal people. He returned with two new cans, quietly yet firmly half-begging half-demanding that Kouichi never tell anyone about his momentary lapse in control of his emotions, especially during what seemed to be a false alarm.

_Kouichi._ This time, she spoke as though amused, not as though she was just senselessly repeating his name. Somehow, his mind started latching onto the suspicion that his brother really was doing something against him. He knew something was going on. Or did he? Kouji took a long swig of his soda, and as he watched his Adam's apple bobbing, Kouichi had an extremely vivid vision of a knife plunging into his throat, and blood and cola spewing everywhere.  
Kouji was going to die. There was no doubt about it. He was going to die a horrible, painful death. He gripped the can in his hand hard; how could he let his younger brother die at the hands of some lunatic? How could he let him die a horrible, painful death? Would it just be more merciful to kill him now, softly, so that he passed away in peace? It would be better than having some strange man attacking him. Who knew how sick the guy would be, too. Maybe he'd defile Kouji's body after he'd killed him. Yes. It would be merciful to kill him and put him out of his misery before that happened.  
"Nii-san?" Kouji was looking at him, concerned again. It pulled him out of his thoughts. What was he thinking that for? No one was going to kill Kouji. Even so, if someone was going to kill him, he'd never be able to bring himself to kill his brother so he wouldn't be killed by someone else. That was just sick.  
"I'm fine," Kouichi repeated for what felt like the nineteenth time since leaving Kouji's room. He didn't feel fine this time. He still saw Kouji's neck spurting blood in his mind's eye. It was unnerving. He wanted to get out of there as soon as possible. God, if he actually was capable of thinking he should kill his brother, who know what he actually would _do_.  
_Kouichi._ She sighed his name, so calm, so sweet, and so sympathizing. All at once, he felt another deep bond forming with her. She was the only one who understood his torment. Perhaps she'd done the very thing he'd been thinking of doing with the male; she'd known he would die, and she killed him out of mercy. Kouji was looking at him, so concerned, and Kouichi was loathe to see that face, a face so reminiscent of his own, crushed and unrecognizable because of some sicko's twisted games. He loved his brother. He'd never want anyone to hurt him. Maybe that's why he had to kill him; to save him.

...

_Your brother.  
_They had gone to bed a long time ago. Or, Kouji had gone to bed. Kouichi had just gone to his temporary room, had sat in his usual position, and waited. He had been sitting in his room for hours, just waiting and waiting for the angel to come back. He'd forgotten to eat again, and he hadn't moved in so long he could barely feel his legs. It was late into the night, and when he finally heard her voice, he almost thought he was dreaming.  
"Kouji?" he asked, and he heard her humming gently. "What about him?"  
_He's very worried about you.  
_Kouichi weakly smiled, and imagined his brother's face in a state of rare innocence. He _was _worried. "I don't know why. I'm more worried for him."  
_He senses your sadness and your anger.  
_"Sadness, yes. I'm dead. I'm sad I'm dead. But anger? No. I died by no one's fault but my own. I should blame myself for not being careful. Smart people do not run down stairs. That was stupid."  
_You're angry that you died when other people more deserving of death still live.  
_"I don't think anyone deserves to die. Death is just a natural part of life. If people didn't die, we'd be horribly overcrowded."  
_Kouichi._ His name was a sigh. He felt as though he'd been scolded just by having his name spoken. _You wanted to kill him.  
_"...Kouji?"  
_You want to kill people who don't deserve to live.  
_"No, that's wrong. I only thought about killing him because...I thought it would be better for him to die at my hands, safe and free of worry, than at someone else's. There are some sick people in the world. I didn't WANT to kill him, God no, the last thing I want is for my brother to die."  
_You want to kill people who don't deserve to live.  
_"You're lying!" he said hotly, actually feeling anger and resentment towards her for the first time since he'd heard her voice. She knew nothing! "You don't know what I'm thinking. I don't think people should die."  
_You think people who don't deserve to live should die painfully and be cast away into the bad place.  
_"Oh yeah? People like who, huh? Who do you think I really hate that much to where I'd want to kill them? And don't just say a group of people and try to get away with that, like, 'child molesters.' Name a specific person, not Kouji, who I want to kill."  
_Saburo.  
_Kouichi was stung. He hadn't thought the angel would be able to pull out a name. But she had. Of someone he really despised, no less.  
_Saburo makes you and people around you miserable. You hate him. You think he deserves to die before he can grow up and torment other people.  
_"I...I don't like him. But I don't want to kill him. That's ridiculous. And he's just a kid; he doesn't know any better."  
_He will grow up with no sense of right or wrong. He will torment other people.  
_"Well you know what? Then he'd eventually be sent to jail."  
_The guilty never suffer for their sins as they should, Kouichi. You know that. The innocent suffer.  
_Kouichi thought of his poor mother, suffering for years with the strain of raising a child independently on meager pay while his father and Kouji lived the high life. It had been his father's fault, anyway. The wrong never pay for their injustice.  
_Your killings would be righteous. It's okay that you kill him because you're killing him out of compassion for other people, not for your own selfish desires. You recognize bad people from good people. You have a talent for pin-pointing people who will go to the good place, and those who will go to the bad place. It's okay to kill people who will go to the bad place.  
_In utter denial, Kouichi tried to stand up and get away from her, though it would be impossible to escape something in his mind, but his legs felt like needles of fire were poking into them. His left leg cramped up and he kneeled on the floor, gasping in pain and anxiously rubbing his calf to sooth it.  
_Kouichi._ She was full of pity. She was just trying to help him. But she was wrong. She was absolutely wrong about him, because there was no way he was capable of killing anyone.

He stumbled to the door, and prepared to open it. But he paused as his hand reached the knob, and a rush of fear began coursing through him. What if there was someone beyond the door? His father? Kouji? What if they were standing there, had heard his conversation with the angel, were waiting for him to come out, and then they would just kill him? He backed away from the door, staring at it in terror, trying to stare THROUGH it to see the heinous person on the other side. Maybe he'd understand why his father would want to kill him, the bastard child, but Kouji? Why would Kouji want to kill him? Unless he really did know what was going on! That whole display this afternoon, it was all an act! KOUJI was the one who wanted to kill him! He scrambled away from the door, afraid of Kouji's sharp eyes noticing the shadows of his feet beneath the cracks. He could almost swear he heard him laughing smugly, cockily, completely all-knowing. Then, proving himself right, Kouji knocked on the door. He heard the knock clearly, calmly, firmly. This was no teasing knock or gentle knock. This was a knock that demanded it be responded to. Kouji was expecting him to open the door. He wasn't kidding around.  
_Kouichi?  
_He was caught between panting and laughing at himself. His own brother.  
_Kouichi._ She sounded pitying again.  
"My brother," he managed to get out. "My brother, my own brother. That son of a bitch. I'm sorry, please disregard that, Mother." Then he started laughing again. He leaped to the door this time and jerked it open, prepared to defend himself from his brother's attack, but there was no one there. He still chuckled in a disturbingly repetitive monotone, "Heh, heh, heh, heh, heh," and he expected his brother to jump out at him at any minute, but he didn't. Kouji was no where to be found. That coward. That pathetic little coward; getting all cocky and threatening him, and thinking he could just get away with it because he wasn't there.  
"Heh, heh, heh, heh, heh, heh."  
_Kouichi?  
_"You aren't going to get me," he panted, then he started rushing towards Kouji's room. "You aren't going to get me! I'll get you first!"  
_Kouichi. It's okay. Everything's going to be okay.  
_"Heh, heh, heh, heh."

He reached the door. Behind it would be Kouji. He'd either be crouched behind the door, ready to strike as soon as he walked through it, or he'd be in his bed, pretending to be just so innocent and completely asleep. Kouichi decided that since Kouji didn't have the guts to ambush him at his door, he would take a chance and assume he'd be in his bed, pretending to be asleep. He slowly opened the door, and peeked inside, half-expecting Kouji to leap at him like a wildcat and start stabbing at his eyes. But he didn't. Immediately, he could tell he was in his bed, and he even had the nerve to face towards him instead of away from him. That was a dangerous maneuver if he accidentally laughed or smiled, but if he could pull it off, it was very convincing.  
"Heh, heh, heh, heh, heh." He tip-toed to his bed. Kouji never moved, except for his steady breathing, and he gave absolutely no indication that he'd been out of his bed in hours. He seemed sound asleep; Kouichi almost believed it. Kouji would never have a moment to defend himself. He'd pick him up and press into the pressure point in the back of his neck before he started struggling, and then, as he rested peacefully and happily, he'd smother him to death. It would be nice and painless.  
_Kouichi.  
_He was suddenly terrified of someone behind him. His father! His father had caught him, just at the ultimate moment, just before he killed his brother! He'd be locked away in a mental ward and strapped down in a bed, unable to move, for the rest of his life. No, he wouldn't be taken away! He'd kill him too! He spun around, but there was no one in the doorway. The room was completely empty. He spun around to Kouji again, positive he'd woken up, but he hadn't. He turned again, positive his father had come out from hiding and was coming at him. No one.  
"Heh, heh, heh, heh, heh." He returned to his brother, sleeping softly like a baby, completely ignorant of everything. Or, no, he was faking. He was actually awake; he was probably smirking in his mind because he knew Kouichi would never have the guts to hurt him. Little did he know...  
_Kouichi_.  
Getting pissed off that the angel kept calling to him, he finally hissed, "What?"  
_Now's not the time.  
_"But you said I had a talent for knowing who to kill," he whispered indignantly. "I believe it. I think Kouji needs to die. Or he's going to..."  
_To kill you?  
_Kouichi's entire body wilted, like a dying plant. "Oh."  
_Now's not the time, Kouichi.  
_He was overwhelmed by emotion again; he'd nearly killed his brother! Over what? A false threat? Even if Kouji had intended to kill him, what did it matter? He was dead! He couldn't be killed. Why would he end his brother's life? Why?  
_Come on, Kouichi.  
_Thank God for the angel. She'd just saved him from doing something horrible. She really was looking out for him. She knew right and wrong, and she knew what he should do, and what he shouldn't do. She was always right.  
...Then was she right about Saburo?

Kouji stirred a little. Kouichi gave him a harmless kiss on his forehead, whispered that he was sorry, and quickly got out of there before he woke up. He couldn't kill his brother. He loved his brother! More than anything in the world, he loved his brother. He could never kill him.  
"Am I really supposed to kill?" Kouichi whispered as he got into his own bed. He was wide-awake, and the sun was going to rise soon.  
_Not now.  
_"When am I supposed to kill someone? And will killing them let me move on? Will it?"  
_Not now.  
_"When, though? Tell me! Tell me when I'm supposed to kill someone. WHO am I supposed to kill?"  
_Those who don't accept you. Those who turn their back on you.  
_"But...those people only committed a wrong to me. That would be a selfish reason to kill them. Why would I kill only those people?" With his mind still swirling of his own death, his brother's death, violence, anger, depression, turmoil, his head suddenly collapsed on the pillow.  
_Sleep, child.  
_"No, no, I don't want to sleep." Immediately after saying that, he slipped away. He had nightmares about Hell, death, and killing. Fear laced all of his dreams like a deadly poison, reproducing like a virus until he thought the nightmares themselves would be enough to kill him. He would be frightened to death. He dreamed of horrible people who were stalking him and hiding in the shadows, only to jump on him at the last moment, just before he reached safety. Or even as he reached safety, he realized those stalking him were demons, and he could never hide from them. They were everywhere. He couldn't see them, but they were everywhere, threatening him. It was a never-ending dream and it was spiraling out of control. He recognized that while it might be a dream right now, it would soon be reality. He knew he'd wake up and be dead for real. As soon as he really opened his eyes, he wouldn't be in some sad little purgatory, he'd be in Hell. And for the rest of his life, or his after-life, he'd be afraid.  
He heard Saburo laughing at him; "Heh, heh, heh, heh," and a chorus of demons joined him. And his brother, his own brother, lead a song of death with a guitar. Each string made a surreal sound; it was cruel and evil and screaming of death. And the ringing, oh, that horrible ringing in his ears! He was going to go deaf; his ears were going to bleed! No, they were bleeding. There was blood running down his hands. The sound was horrible! And yet Kouji just played louder and faster, cackling wildly at his brother. What did he do to deserve this torment?

"Kouichi?" He opened his eyes, ready to scream and ready to cry. He sat up. Too fast, black-spots peppered his vision. When he could finally see straight, he found Kouji kneeling on his bed. He was fully dressed, and looking concerned again. He hadn't seen a look of concern on Kouji's face so often since he'd gotten out of the hospital, that day he died.  
"Nii-san, it's time to wake up. It's really late."  
"Wha...?"  
He turned to look at his clock. It was painful to move his neck; every joint and every muscle was in burning pain. It was past two in the afternoon. He couldn't believe he'd actually slept that late.  
"I'd have woken you up earlier, but every time I tried, you hid in your pillow and started crying, and you wouldn't respond to me. I thought you were awake and just upset about something, and it didn't occur to me until just now that you might still be asleep." He paused. "Nii-san, what's wrong? Please, talk to me. Tell me what's wrong with you."  
"Nothing's wrong with me!" he snapped, then forced himself to cool off. Kouji had just worded his question wrong, that's all. He hadn't meant it like that. "I mean, it's just...stuff. It's not a big deal. Just a really, really bad nightmare."  
"I'll say. You'd think you were face to face with Satan himself the way you were wailing."  
The irony was just so appropriate, he just had to laugh. "Heh, heh, heh, heh."

He'd kill him. To save him, and to save himself, he'd kill him. Kouji smiled at him, assuring him that no matter what was wrong, it was going to be alright. Kouichi smiled back, and agreed. It would be alright soon.


End file.
